Description
With simple dishes like margherita pizzas, you should use high quality ingredients to get the best taste. Use fresh basil, high quality mozzarella and good tomatoes. Everything you do makes a difference in the final result…including making your own dough and grilling the pizza!
Ingredients
- FOR THE DOUGH:
- 1-⅛ cup Warm Water
- 3 teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
- 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
- 3 cups All-purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- Cornmeal, For Your Pizza Stone
- FOR THE SAUCE:
- 28 ounces, fluid San Marzano Tomatoes (canned)
- 1 bunch Basil, Leaves Only, Half Chopped And Half Whole
- ¼ cups Olive Oil (Use Your Judgement)
- Salt And Pepper, to taste
- FOR THE ASSEMBLY:
- 1 Ball Mozzarella, Cut Into Slices And Small Cubes
- Oregano And Crushed Red Pepper Flakes For The Table
Preparation
For the dough:
Combine water, yeast, honey and olive oil in a bowl and mix. After this mixture gets foamy (about 10 minutes or so), add in 2 1/2 cups of flour and the salt and stir until the dough comes together. Dough should be sticky at this point.
Form the dough into a ball with your hands and add the remaining 1/2 cup of flour. Knead it on a floured surface for a few minutes.
Rub the same bowl that you have been using with olive oil and place the dough inside the bowl. Coat the dough in the olive oil.
Cover bowl with a towel and place in a warm place. Let the dough rise for about 1-1.5 hours.
Once the dough has risen punch it down a bit and then place on a floured surface and roll out the dough (with hands or rolling pin or both) so it fits a medium to large pizza pan.
Place the towel back over the dough and let sit in a warm place for a few minutes before preparing your pizza.
For the sauce:
Add the tomatoes, the chopped basil, a dash of salt and pepper and the olive oil into a blender. Blend until smooth.
For the assembly:
Place a grill-safe pizza stone on the grill and turn on the grill to medium high to high.
Dust some cornmeal onto a pizza peel and transfer your dough (that has already been rolled out) to the peel. Then slide the dough onto the grill. Pre-cook your dough on the grill for a few minutes (pop any bubbles that form), until the bottom is crisp.
Take dough off the grill and add the pizza sauce to the dough (don’t drown the dough in the sauce, it always looks like you do not have enough on the pizza, but you do). Add the mozzarella and basil on top of the pizza.
Carefully transfer the pizza to the pizza stone on the grill. Use your judgement to see when to take the pizza off. You can lift the dough a bit with a spatula to check the bottom of the pizza to see it is done cooking.
Dough recipe from howsweeteats.com.
